


Wake the Snow

by atimi (bertee)



Series: CWRPF: Intergalactic Problem Solvers [3]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe - Space, M/M, Slavery, Snow and Ice, Yeti - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-22
Updated: 2011-02-22
Packaged: 2017-11-11 10:06:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/477371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bertee/pseuds/atimi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After travelling with ex-slave!Jensen and long-suffering mentor!Jeff for a couple of months, intergalactic problem-solver!Jared finally takes the next step of asking Jensen out on a date. Unfortunately, like most things in Jared's life, it doesn't go as planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wake the Snow

"I want to take Jensen on a date."

Jeff didn't look up from where he was reading the day's news on the tabletop. "Uh-huh. And I want to dye my beard pink." 

Jared frowned and Jeff glanced up with the apology, "Oh, my bad, I thought we were playing 'Well, that's a dumb fucking idea'."

Jared rolled his eyes. "You're hilarious."

"Right back at you," Jeff said. "I'm still waiting on the punchline to you wanting to take Jensen on a date."

"Does there have to be a punchline?" Jared asked hopefully, settling on the tabletop. "It's just a date. And not a weird, pressurized, we-should-have-sex-now date, but a happy, friendly, let's-test-the-waters date. We can dip our toes in the relationship waters and then dry our feet and put our socks back on if we don't like it."

Jeff stared at him and Jared rubbed the back of his neck. "Okay, so analogies aren't my strong point, but is it really so bad to want to take him out to have a good time? This is Jensen we're talking about - we could go to the trash-dump on Klech and he'd find it fascinating."

"I'm glad you've got such a high opinion of your prospective boyfriend," Jeff said sarcastically. "Look, I got no problem with you showing Jensen the wonders of the universe - you can go frolic through rainbow-colored galaxies to your heart's content - but adding sex to the mix is a bad idea. His introduction to space doesn't need to include what's in your pants."

"Okay, first, I didn't mean it in a bad way," Jared said. "He's easily impressed by shiny things. It's cute." Jeff shot him a look and Jared cleared his throat. "And second, I'm not trying to get in his pants or get him into mine. I like him, Jeff," he admitted sheepishly, "and I think he might like me too. Taking him on a date is the next logical step."

"Towards what? Fucking him?" Jeff smiled sadly. "C'mon, Jared, we both know about Jensen's issues with sex. I don't think the kid's ever had sex of his own free will, let alone any kind of real relationship."

"I know that," Jared said honestly, "and I don't want to push him into anything he doesn't want to do but it's been two months, man. If Jensen wants this and if we could work it out, that'd be awesome. I mean, we've been sharing a bed every night and he's been fine with it."

"That doesn't-"

"I know that doesn't mean he wants a relationship," Jared cut in. "It doesn't even mean he likes me as anything except someone to snuggle with at night, but I'm curious, y'know? Hell, even if he just wants to stay friends, I still want the two of us to hang out together some more." He looked over at Jeff with a rueful grin. "No offence."

Jeff arched an eyebrow. "Are you seriously accusing me of cockblocking? This coming from the guy who thinks that a plancher hat hanging on a doorknob is totally just decorative?"

"It was Palacia!" Jared protested. "They had weird decorations everywhere - how was I supposed to know you were getting laid?" He sulked a little and muttered, "I didn't even know you owned a plancher hat."

"I'm a constant surprise," Jeff deadpanned. "So you wanna take Jensen out on a maybe-date without me there?"

"Basically, yeah," Jared said with a sigh. "Is that okay?"

Jeff ran his hand through his hair as he leaned back in his seat. "I still think a date's a bad idea but I guess you know Jensen better than I do right now."

Jared tried to hide his smile. "Is that a yes?"

"What do you want, my blessing?" Jeff said. "Don't have sex with him, don't get married to him, and don't get him pregnant, and we'll be good."

Jared grinned, feeling marginally less nervous now that he had Jeff's approval. "Thanks, man."

He leaned down to press a sloppy wet kiss to Jeff's cheek and laughed when Jeff grimaced and slapped him away. "Get the fuck off me, Padalecki." He wiped at his face with exaggerated disgust. "Are you part dog or something? I feel like I'm covered in slobber."

Still riding high at the prospect of taking Jensen out, Jared swung himself off the table and reached over to ruffle Jeff's hair. "You love it."

Jeff rolled his eyes, straightened his hair, and looked back at the news on the tabletop as he said, "Please don't kiss Jensen like that. The guy's been through enough already without you trying to drown him with your mouth." He took a sip of his java and asked, "Where do you wanna take him? I know it doesn't take much to keep Jensen entertained but maybe pick somewhere more hygienic than Klech."

"I was thinking Halk," Jared said. "It's nearby and it's a Class 8, so it should be safe enough. I don't know if Jensen's seen snow before but the views there are supposed to mindblowing." He shrugged. "Well, as mindblowing as snow gets."

"You just wanna make snow angelites with him," Jeff muttered and Jared beamed.

"That too," he said. "It'll be fun, dude. Plus it's not far from that pirate captain if you wanna kill some time?"

Nostalgia colored Jeff's voice as he said wistfully, "Mharta..."

Jared wrinkled his nose. "Right. You can drop me and Jensen down on Halk and then go do things I never want to think about with Mharta. It's a win-win."

"Sounds like a plan," Jeff said with approval and Jared held his fist out to bump against Jeff's.

"Awesome." Trying to sound less excitable than he felt, he backed off towards the door as he said, "I'll go tell Jensen."

"Jared," Jeff called after him and he halted in the doorway to listen. "Be careful, okay?"

"I will," he promised. "It's just a friendly non-date down on a safe, scenic Class 8. It'll be fine."

He caught Jeff's murmur of "Famous last words…" but didn't stop to talk any more as he headed out down the hallway to find out Jensen's opinion on the possible combination of dating and snow.

He wasn't surprised to see that Jensen was in his usual storage bay and he halted by the window to look down to where Jensen was sitting cross-legged on the floor with parts of a c-bot scattered around him and a look of puzzled concentration on his face.

Being the mature adult that he was, Jared absolutely did not think it was adorable.

Sticking his head around the door, he rapped on the window and waved awkwardly when Jensen jumped at the sound. "Hey."

Jensen looked up and Jared couldn't stop himself from smiling when Jensen lit up at the sight of him. "Hey," he said, wiping his oil-smudged hands on his pants as Jared climbed down the ladder into the bay. "Is everything okay? Did we hit another blockade?"

"No blockade," Jared said, remembering the variety of costumes, accents and aliases that had been needed to get through the last one without their ship being searched. "I just wanted to see how you were doing."

"I'm okay," Jensen said quickly, as though Jared needed assurance that he wasn't going to be a problem. He looked down at the metal parts spread out around him and then back up at Jared. "I can put this back together if you need it?"

Over the last two months, Jensen had taken to exploring some of the minor mechanics on the ship. Jared was convinced it was Jensen's way of trying to understand what the hell was going on in this new life of his after years on a Class 4 planet, and once he'd gotten over his fear that Jensen would accidentally electrocute himself, Jared had to admit that he was picking up the basics pretty well. "It's fine," he said, picking his way through the debris to sit down on the floor next to Jensen. "We got loads of other c-bots we can use if the food store explodes again." He smiled in Jensen's direction, feeling his stomach twist up with nerves. "Actually I came down here to ask you something."

He was struck by the usual hit of guilt when Jensen's eyes went wide with panic; even after all this time with Jared instead of Somerville, Jensen was still quick to assume that he'd done something wrong and that he was going to get punished for it.

"It's nothing bad," Jared promised. "We're coming up to a planet and I was wondering if you wanted to head down and check it out with me? Get some air, see some sights, find some new and disgusting food for me to sample. Y'know, the usual." Jensen smiled at that, ducking his head to try to hide it, and Jared asked, "How about it?"

"Is there a job there?" Jensen said. "I've been practicing with my blaster."

"No job," Jared said apologetically. He knew how much Jensen liked his blaster. "Sorry. You think you'd be okay hanging out with me even if you can't shoot things?"

Jensen's cheeks turned pink. "I-I didn't-" He wiped his hands on his pants again while he found the right words, "I didn't mean to complain-"

Jared caught Jensen's hands to hold them still. "It's okay, I was kidding," he said, reaching up to wipe a smear of grease off Jensen's cheek. "So you're happy to come visit Halk?"

Jensen nodded. "It sounds good. Do I need to bring anything?"

"I'll find you some decent clothes," Jared said, doing a quick mental inventory of the clothes they had on the ship. "It's a snow planet mostly, so you need to keep warm, but the views are supposed to be amazing." Feeling like he was lying by omission, he added, "Uh, also Jeff's going off to have sex with a pirate while we go down to the planet."

Jensen's brow creased. Jared thought it was kind of unfair that Jensen looked so attractive when he got confused. "So it's just you and me?"

"Yep," Jared said, taking his hands off Jensen's as he tried to act casual. "Is that okay? If you wanna have Jeff there, I can-"

"It's great." Jensen twisted his fingers together as he admitted, "I like spending time with you."

Jared beamed and patted him on the thigh. "The feeling's totally mutual, trust me." He pushed himself to his feet, careful not to stand on the parts of the c-bot, and backed up as he said, "We should be there in a couple of hours."

"I'm looking forward to it," Jensen said, appearing far more relaxed than Jared felt as he picked up another piece of machinery and peered at it curiously.

The enthusiasm in his voice was enough to reassure Jared that he was doing the right thing in asking Jensen out like this and he climbed back up the ladder, already thinking through what clothes he was going to pick out for himself and for Jensen (and instantly vetoing the questionable purple snowsuit that Jeff seemed weirdly attached to.)

"See you soon?" Jensen called up, looking happy at the prospect of some alone time with Jared, and Jared smiled back at him.

"It's a date," he said cheerfully before heading away to his bedroom, leaving Jensen to puzzle over the mysteries of a c-bot.

However, it was only when he was elbow-deep in unfortunately-patterned snow clothes that he wondered how far Jensen's understanding of the word 'date' actually went.

**+++**

Halk was shiny.

Jared wanted to have a more intelligent way of thinking about it; he wanted to look out over the frosted surface of Halk and think that it was _luminous_ or _effulgent_ or some other fancy-sounding word but as he piloted the shuttle down onto a dock, he mostly kept coming back to the fact that it was so very shiny.

The snow was white and gleaming, untouched in the quiet of the mountains, and it made the planet look like something a child had drawn, all smooth surfaces and frozen peaks as far as Jared could see. Even when the rock faces were sheer, the snow was piled high enough that only narrow slices of black-gray rock were visible, and Jared started to think that the stories about Halk never seeing snow-free ground were true. It was piled deep all around them, compacted down by years of snowfall, but the morning sun glinted off the surface to turn it into a brand new canvas ready for Jared to explore. 

He steered the ship down, pulling it into park as it sank the final few feet to rest on the carefully anchored dock, and then killed the engine. Silence rolled over them, crisp and still, and Jared glanced over at Jensen. "Welcome to Halk."

Jensen's eyes were wide as he looked out over the snow. Making a landing on a new planet still wasn't something Jensen was totally comfortable with, especially when they did it in the tiny shuttle rather than the main ship, but he was slowly getting used to it and Jared was pleased to see that he'd held it together well enough to be able to appreciate the view now that they were there.

"It's amazing," Jensen said, leaning forward to get a better look at the snow-steeped valley stretching ahead of them. "All of that's snow?"

"Every last bit," Jared said, unstrapping himself from the seat and pulling his snowshoes on in the cramped space. "Well, obviously there's ground under there somewhere but that's snow covering it. You wanna go out and take a look?"

Jensen nodded, tugging on the snowshoes Jared had dug out of storage, and Jared clambered out of his side of the shuttle and ran around to help Jensen get out. The cold air hit him like a bucket of water to the face, sneaking through his hair and around the back of his neck, and he breathed out slowly while his clothes adjusted to the cold and heated up to keep his body at its usual temperature. It couldn't cover all of him and the wind was still icy on his cheeks but it was enough to stop the cold from doing any more than turn his face pink.

He pulled Jensen's door open and smiled when Jensen shivered too at the first contact with the Halk air. He huddled in on himself and Jared rested his hand on his shoulder as he said, "The clothes'll keep you warm. Just take a breath and wait for them to settle."

Nodding, Jensen relaxed a little and Jared gave his shoulder a squeeze. "That's it. Now just swing your feet out and lean on me if you feel like you're losing your balance. Snowshoes can be kind of disorienting at first." 

He gestured to where his own feet were hovering less than an inch above the snow, held up by the thin blue forcefield that was built into the bottom of his shoes. Jensen looked dubious at the prospect of being supported by the same forcefield but did as Jared said, and Jared raised his arms in time to catch him as he pitched forward with a panicked yelp. 

"Easy, easy," he said, trying not to laugh at the way Jensen was clinging onto his arms. "It's okay, just try to get your balance and stand upright. The shoes'll do the rest if you let them."

With one arm around Jensen's waist and one holding his hand, Jared helped maneuver him to a standing position. Jensen still looked unsteady and so Jared kept their gloved hands together as he looked at him with a smile. "Good job. Now take a couple of steps forward like you're walking normally and you'll be set."

Jensen looked like he wanted to argue but he kept his lips pressed together in concentration as he laid one foot in front of the other. The forcefield molded itself to the contours of the snow, keeping a uniform width no matter where Jensen stepped, and Jared held onto him for a few steps until Jensen seemed to have convinced himself that he wasn't going to fall. "See? That wasn't so hard."

Biting his lip, Jensen glanced over with a sheepish smile. "Sorry. It's kinda new."

"Hey, don't be sorry," he said. "Misha told me he point-blank refused to go to any snow planets until he was 260 because the idea of floating on snow fucked with his chi or something. You get points just for leaving the shuttle." 

He reached over to grab their packs out of the shuttle and closed the doors behind him before settling his hand on Jensen's back and guiding him away from the dock and out into the snow. The colored path markers were barely visible above the thickness of the snow which blanketed the slope leading down towards the valley but Jared followed them anyway until they hit the trail that ran along the side of the low ridge. The walk was easy and fairly flat - Jared wasn't prepared to tackle snow and a difficult hike at the same time - and as far as first semi-dates went, he figured he could do worse than taking Jensen on a scenic stroll on a shiny new planet.

"Have you ever seen snow before?" he asked, shifting his pack higher up on his shoulder. "I know Thuma was big on rain but did it ever get cold enough for snow?"

"In some places," Jensen said. "We didn't get any in my village but I saw some up in the mountains when I was with the army."

"Did you like it?" Jared asked. It took approximately half a second for him to realize how stupid that sounded and he flashed Jensen a self-deprecating grin. "Not that I'm expecting you to have any strong opinions on snow or anything."

Jensen's face was lit by the sun bouncing off the snow, making his smile look even brighter as he said, "Not really. We didn't have floating shoes or heated clothes or anything so it was mostly just cold. It's not like the general gave me time out to go play in the snow."

"Right." His arms ached to give Jensen a sympathy hug but he figured he needed to stop petting Jensen every time he said something about his past owners. "Sorry, man. This was supposed to be a day of happy thoughts."

Jensen smiled. "I'm happy," he promised. "I get to explore a brand new planet and spend the whole day with you."

Despite being absurdly pleased that Jensen liked hanging out with him, Jared couldn't resist pointing out, "Y'know, you spend most days exploring new planets and spending time with me."

"And most days I'm happy," Jensen said, looking perfectly content with this conclusion. "I'm serious, Jared. I keep expecting this whole thing to lose some of its shine but it just keeps on being amazing."

"Even when we got attacked by interplanetary eels?"

Jensen grinned. "Even then."

"How about when you got Naxian flu?" Jared teased. "You were kind of miserable, dude."

In all honesty, he didn't really blame Jensen for being miserable - there was a reason most people were vaccinated against Naxian flu at birth - and he hadn't minded staying with him through the fever-highs of the flu, but he knew that hadn't been a fun week for Jensen.

A self-conscious blush darkened Jensen's wind-reddened cheeks as he admitted quietly, "I hate being useless."

Feeling like he'd said something wrong at some point, Jared tried to paper over his mistake as quickly as he could. "Hey, you're never useless. I got out of going to visit Jeff's creepy informant because you couldn't sit up without passing out."

"I don't think that counts as not being useless," Jensen said but he seemed to relax a little anyway as they walked further along the snow ridge.

"You haven't met Heyerdahl," Jared said with a shudder. "It definitely counts as useful."

Jensen looked down with a smile. "Glad I could help, I guess."

"Think of this as me returning the favor," Jared said, walking in front of Jensen and turning to face him as he held his arms out wide. "You get me out of awkward errands, I give you a snow day." He leaned down to scoop up a handful of snow and patted it into a ball. "I'm guessing you never had a snowball fight?"

Jensen eyed the snowball nervously. "Does it hurt?"

"Hurt? No," Jared said, surprised by the question. Jensen still looked uneasy and so he tossed the snowball from hand to hand as he stepped in closer. "It's just a game. The snow's pretty soft - it shouldn't hurt at all." Throwing the snowball up in the air, he smashed it on his knuckles and flashed Jensen a grin as snow floated down around them. "See? Harmless."

He reached up to brush the flakes out of Jensen's hair and chuckled when Jensen crinkled his nose. "Don't worry, man, I'm not about to pressgang you into a snowball battle. I'm totally down with constructing elaborate snow forts with lots of mini snow people instead."

"Works for me." Jensen looked at the snow in contemplation. "You think we can build one big enough to fit us inside?"

"Hell yes," Jared said with a grin, pleased to see that Jensen's enthusiasm for construction extended to building overly ambitious snow forts. 

He dropped his pack to the ground where it sank down a little into the snow and then turned to see Jensen deposit his own pack and crouch down to dig his hands into the snow. Jared watched him play with it for a few seconds, wiggling his buried fingers and picking up handfuls of snow just to get used to the feel of it, and he wandered closer when Jensen looked up at him with a smile. "So how should we start?"

"You tell me," he teased. "You're the one with all the engineering smarts. Me and Jeff are still trying to work out how you rigged up that cage trap last month."

As always, Jensen seemed both embarrassed and happy to be receiving any kind of praise but Jared's encouragement had apparently done its job when he dug his hands deeper into the snow and started to pile it up. "Maybe we should start with a base?" Jensen suggested. "We can make sure the floor's solid and flat then build up and out from there." He pulled another armful of snow onto the pile and kept talking, "We can-"

"Wait," Jared said, holding up his hand and frowning at the hint of color in the shallow hole that Jensen had just dug. "Looks like someone dropped something here."

He crouched down to get a better look at the two small, reddish-brown circles which were visible amid the bright, blank sweep of snow that covered the ground, and he felt Jensen's shoulder bump against his as he asked, "What is it?"

Jared shook his head. "I don't know. Sunshades, maybe? I guess someone must've left them out here before the rest of the snow came down." 

Trying to keep his balance on the forcefield of the snowshoes, he edged forward and reached out to grab whatever had been left. He was inches away, his fingers almost brushing the smooth, shiny surface of the circles, but he frowned when the snow seemed to move under his arm. 

Half-convinced that his mind was playing tricks on him, he looked again at the stillness of the overturned snow but his eyes snapped up to the circles in time to catch a swift flicker of movement.

The circles blinked at him.

"Holy shit-"

The creature moved quicker than they could. A gnarled hand burst up from the snow, its strong, thick fingers clamping around Jensen's ankle before Jared could draw breath to warn him, and he yelled over the crack of breaking bones, "Jensen!"

He lunged for him, grabbing onto his clothes and his arms as Jensen dropped down into the snow with a cry of pain. The creature's eyes vanished before Jared could launch a counterattack and Jared's own eyes widened when he saw the snow shift suddenly. "Jensen, hold on!"

He pulled hard, trying to get Jensen up and away from whatever was holding him, but as much as he tugged, he couldn't stop Jensen from being dragged down into the snow. Jensen clutched at his arms, fighting as much as he could, but he shouted in pain as the creature kept pulling him down by his broken ankle. "Jared! Please, please don't let it-"

"I got you," Jared said, gripping his arm tight and giving whatever reassurance he could even while they were both being dragged deeper. "Just hold on, okay? Just hold on to me, just-"

The next pull was quick and unexpected and Jared dived forward, grabbing nothing but air as Jensen was hauled backwards out of his reach. "No!" 

Jensen's scream was stifled by the snow as the creature pulled him down and Jared dropped down into the overturned snow, too late to do anything but yell after him, "Jensen!"

+++

  
"Jensen!"

Thigh-deep in the drifts, Jared dug down as fast as he could, throwing aside empty armfuls of snow as he fought to get to Jensen. The snow crumbled in to cover the tunnel which the creature had dragged Jensen down, leaving Jared scrabbling uselessly with gloved hands for any sign of life.

"Jensen!"

The shout had barely left his lips when a sudden rumble rose up behind him. 

Knowing that he had to survive long enough to rescue Jensen, Jared abandoned his digging attempts and lunged for where his blaster and blade were resting at the bottom of his pack. The rumbling bellow almost seemed to be on top of him when his fingers brushed the strap of the bag, but Jared held it together long enough to pull out his blaster, roll onto his back and point the barrel at his attacker in one quick motion.

He froze with his finger on the trigger when he realized he wasn't aiming at a creepy and mysterious snow monster but at a very human-looking girl.

A very human-looking girl who just happened to be holding a very big gun.

"Who-"

"Get down!" the girl yelled over the roar of the engine behind her. 

As confused as he was, Jared wasn't about to argue and dropped further down into the snow just in time to avoid the white-hot bullet which blasted a hole in the snow right behind him.

"Higher!"

Hearing a guy's voice, Jared risked a glance up at the small ship hovering behind the woman and the man in the driver's seat who was apparently manning some kind of scan. He called out more instructions to his companion as she aimed her gun in the right direction and from the urgency in his voice, Jared started to hope they were on his side rather than the monster's.

That didn't make him feel too much better about the woman blindly firing bullets into the snow, possibly hitting Jensen in the process, and he struggled to his feet, holding his hands out in protest. "Wait, don't shoot! My friend's under there-"

"I'm not gonna shoot your friend," she called, raising her gun higher. "Now stay down."

"There!" the guy shouted from the ship. "You got it."

The woman fired again, sending another heated bullet into the snow. Time seemed to drag as it vanished out of sight, and Jared held his breath for some kind of assurance that it hadn't hit Jensen.

The roar, when it came, was terrifying. Even muffled by the weight of the snow, it was enough to make the soft ground shudder beneath Jared's feet and to send small clumps of snow rolling down the sides of the valley, shaken loose by the furious growl.

"Bingo!" 

A short silence swamped them when the guy killed the engine but he bounded out a moment later, looking far happier than he had any right to be when Jensen was still buried out there. "Nice shot, Harris!"

Smiling, the woman reached out a hand to help Jared up out of the snow. "Learned from the best."

The guy grinned and took Jared's other hand. "Yes, you do." He looked down at Jared and sounded more business-like when he instructed, "On three."

The woman took up the count. "One, two…"

They both pulled on the third beat and Jared struggled to keep himself upright as he was hauled far enough out of the snowdrift to get his feet underneath him. He balanced on the forcefield of his shoes and looked around quickly. "What did you do? Where's Jensen?"

The man and woman exchanged looks but it was left to the man to speak first. "This way."

They ran across the snow, following the direction of the last bullet as the man guided them with the help of his scanner, and came to an abrupt stop when he declared, "Here. He's not far down."

Jared was on his knees in an instant, digging down in the snow with the woman -- _Harris?_ \-- right behind him. The heat of his clothes kept him warm but the fear of what had happened to Jensen was enough to keep chills skittering along his spine as he dug deeper, reaching blindly into the snow in the hopes of hitting something Jensen-shaped. 

He came up empty again and again as the three of them turned over heap after heap of snow, and his arms became so accustomed to the frantic mechanism of digging that he almost didn't believe it when he hit something solid.

"Jensen?" He shoved his arms into the snow, feeling around for proof that it was a person and not just a rock, but he almost collapsed in relief when he felt the unmistakable touch of fingers closing around his wrist. "I got him!"

With a speed that suggested it wasn't their first time doing this, the man and woman cleared the snow from the area, pushing it up out of the way as Jared held onto Jensen with one hand and kept digging with the other. 

His hands gradually came into view, followed by his arms up past his elbows and Jared called down desperately, "I got you. We got you, okay? We're gonna get you out, just hold on!"

Taking hold of both his hands, Jared pulled hard, leaning backwards and using all his weight and strength to drag Jensen up out of the snow. It took all he had not to wrap him in a hug when Jensen's head finally emerged but he kept pulling as the man and woman helped lift Jensen's lower body free of the snow. 

Jensen collapsed on the ground when his broken ankle was eased free, conscious but weak, and Jared dropped down to pull him into his arms as soon as he could. Jensen curled up against him, shivering and taking rapid breaths, and Jared smoothed his hand through his hair as he soothed, "It's okay, I got you." He rubbed his hand down Jensen's back and said softly, "I'm so sorry." 

Jensen's teeth were chattering as he looked up at Jared. "W-w-what was that?"

Jared shook his head. "I don't know. I've never seen anything like that before." He glanced over at the man and the woman who both looked out of breath but relieved. "What was that thing?"

The two of them shared a glance again but this time it was the woman who said with a small sigh, "A yeti."

Jared's eyebrows shot up. If he hadn't been holding his possibly-hypothermic possible-boyfriend, he was pretty sure he would've laughed at the suggestion. "A _yeti_? What, is it in league with the Tooth Fairy and the Lnostal Bunny?"

The woman rolled her eyes. "Hilarious."

"Look, we know it sounds hella crazy," the guy said. "There hasn't been a sighting for centuries-"

"And even those sightings were from crazy-ass monks," Jared pointed out.

"But we're not playing around here," he continued. "We'll tell you everything we know but all of us need to get the hell out of here before it comes back." His gaze dropped to Jensen, who was just about following the conversation but looked like he was on the verge of passing out. "Can you get him to our ship?"

Jared's curiosity about the yeti was dwarfed by his concern for Jensen, and he got to work quickly. 

It ended up being a group effort, with the woman grabbing their packs and Jared and the guy supporting Jensen on both sides as he limped up towards the ship, but they were safely shut inside and rising up from the planet's surface in a matter of minutes.

Tucked up with Jensen in the back seat, Jared adjusted the position of Jensen's leg across his lap to avoid jarring his ankle, and rested his hand at the back of Jensen's neck as he asked quietly, "How's your leg?"

The pallor of Jensen's face should've been enough of an answer but he mustered up a weak smile as he said, "It's been worse."

"Remember what I told you about that not being a reassuring answer? Still true, dude," Jared teased, holding Jensen a little tighter anyway. "You're not allowed to make me worry about your sucky past when you just got attacked and abducted by a yeti. There is only so much worry I can take in a day."

Smiling, Jensen linked his fingers with Jared. "I'm fine."

"Yeah, lying right to my face is a great plan," Jared said, peering down at Jensen's swollen ankle again. "I'm so sorry about this, man. This was supposed to be a fun, peril-free dat- day," he corrected. "Not another opportunity for me to get you injured."

"Hey." Jensen fixed him with a stern look. "This wasn't your fault."

Jensen's stern look was about as authoritative as a drowsy kitten's and Jared sighed. "Yeah, but I should've at least considered-"

"That some mythical monster no-one thought was real would be lurking in the snow to eat us?" He smiled tiredly, still shivering. "No-one's expecting you to be psychic, Jared."

Not wanting to admit Jensen was right, Jared took the diversion where he could. "Man, it'd be awesome to be psychic. It'd make choosing clothes every morning really easy -- I could just look into the future to see what I was wearing later and then copy that."

"I can dress you if you want?" Jensen offered. His face was pale and he looked exhausted as he leaned against Jared's shoulder. "You don't need to resort to psychic powers for that."

"Jensen, you're my friend, not my manservant." He gave his shoulder a quick squeeze. "I can dress myself, I promise. No psychic powers necessary." 

The ship tilted right, following the curve of the valley, and Jared raised his voice as he addressed the people in the front seat, "Hey, since I'm not actually psychic, do you guys wanna fill us in on who you are? 'Cause otherwise I'll have to make up names for you and that's never gonna end well." He offered the woman a smile. "How do you feel about being called Bertha?"

The man was focused on the surroundings as he steered the ship up and over a small ridge but the woman looked back at them with a smile. "I'll pass on Bertha, thanks. I'm Danneel, and this is Aldis."

"Danneel?" Jensen shifted position in Jared's lap and blinked his eyes open wider. It looked like it took some effort. "Harris?"

"Yeah," Jared said with a frown. "He- Aldis called her Harris before." He looked between the two of them. "Do you know each other?"

Jensen's eyes were still wide as he shook his head. "No, we- I saw her name in that infodisk you gave me."

"You actually read that?" Remembering who he was talking to, Jared sighed. "You're Jensen. Of course you did." Another tremor went through Jensen's body and Jared cuddled him closer, hoping that Jensen hadn't recognized Danneel's name from a list of homicidal, yeti-wielding maniacs. "So fill me in?"

"She's a princess," Jensen said simply and Jared blinked.

"A princess," he repeated slowly. "A princess who hunts yetis with her-" He looked at Aldis and tilted his head. "Husband?"

"Bodyguard," Aldis said at the same time as Danneel corrected, "Best friend." 

They looked at each other and then spoke again, with Danneel now offering the explanation, "Head of security and operations" and Aldis saying with a shrug, "BFF."

"Uh, got it," Jared lied. "So you're a princess and you spend your time loitering on a mountain with a gun in case some tourists get yetinapped and need rescuing? What-"

He trailed off as the ship sank down onto a tiny landing dock and peered out of the window to see a small wooden-looking cabin nestled in the side of the mountain. Snow was piled up around it but kept away from the sides of the cabin by the amber glow of a forcefield, and Jared's heart did a little skip at the thought of them being cozy and warm and safe inside.

Parking the ship with ease, Aldis answered his question before he could ask it, "We're a long way from the nearest city right now but this place has some emergency supplies so we can take care of your boy's leg. You can Q&A with the princess here once we're inside."

Danneel elbowed him in the side before clambering out and holding the door open for Jared and Jensen. "Can you make it?"

Jared felt Jensen shudder at the cold wind that swept in through the door but he nodded. "I can make it."

As admirable as Jensen's intentions were, Jared still ended up carrying him across the snow and into the cabin as he avoided putting any weight on his broken ankle. He groaned when Jared lowered him to the wide, neatly-made bed but shook his head and shuffled to the edge instead of laying back. "I'm soaked…"

"Jensen, your ankle looks like someone shoved a hiha fruit under your skin and then smashed it with a sledgehammer. Laundry should be the least of your concerns right now. Get in the bed already."

"He's right," Danneel chimed in from the doorway. "Jensen, right? You should really use the bed -- we need to set that ankle and you're gonna want to be horizontal for that."

Reluctantly, Jensen settled back on the bed with a nervously wary expression on his face. Jared found it very hard not to climb in next to him and attempt to heal his busted ankle through the power of enthusiastic hugs.

Danneel busied herself with a bright red medikit and Jared swallowed hard at the sight of what she was holding when she turned back to face them. "Oh, man…"

Wisely, she ignored him and addressed Jensen instead, "Have you ever used one of these before?"

Jensen stared mutely at the boot-shaped contraption Danneel was holding and shook his head. 

Jared took it upon himself to explain, "He grew up on a Class 4. He only had his Lingua shot a couple of months back -- this is all gonna be new to him."

Danneel's expression softened further and she knelt on the bed bedside him. "I need to set your ankle, okay, Jensen? I'm going to wrap this around your leg and then hit this button right here-" She held up the small computer panel so that Jensen could see the innocuous little green button. "-and this is going to put your bones back in place and help them begin to heal. I'm not going to lie to you, it'll hurt, but it'll be over soon, all right?"

Jared wasn't surprised when Jensen's hand found his. He tugged their gloves off to allow skin-to-skin contact and scooted up the bed to let Jensen lean against him. "I'll be right here," he promised. "You'll be fine."

Jensen didn't look totally convinced but he nodded anyway. "I'm ready."

Jared wanted to wait a little longer, to push for more confirmation than Jensen understood what was going on and was prepared for it, but Danneel got to work easing Jensen's boot and sock off and wrapping the Resetter loosely around his ankle. Jensen winced when his broken bones were jostled and Jared kissed the top of his head. "You're doing good."

Danneel looked up at Jensen with a reassuring smile. "On three, okay?" She rested a hand on his knee and Jared felt Jensen's grip on his fingers get tighter and tighter with her countdown, "One… Two…"

'Three' was drowned out by Jensen's scream.

The Resetter lit up, compressing and adjusting as it forced Jensen's wrenched-apart bones back into place, but Jensen arched back with a pained yell. Danneel's hand on his knee kept his leg in place as he bucked and cried out, and he twisted his body towards Jared instead, burying his face in his shoulder and clutching his hand so tightly that Jared thought he might need a Resetter for his own fingers. 

"It’s okay," he whispered beneath the sound of Jensen’s cries. There wasn’t much reassurance he could provide when Jensen was having his bones mangled by a robot boot so he settled for rocking him and repeating, “I’m here, man. I’m right here.”

Jensen let out one last, wretched sob against his neck before he slumped forward, his body a boneless weight against Jared's chest.

"Jensen?" Jared cupped his face and felt his heartbeat kick up in panic when Jensen's head lolled against his shoulder, pale and cold. "Jensen!"

"Thank God," Danneel murmured. "I'm surprised he lasted that long -- this thing hurts like a bitch." Jared's fear must have read on his face since she assured him, "Don't worry, he's just unconscious. The drugs in the Resetter should keep him under for a while and he'll feel better when he wakes up."

The promise of a healthy Jensen was almost enough to compensate for the unsettling weight of Jensen's limp body in his arms and Jared managed to summon up an unconvincing smile. "Well, I'm glad it's the happy kind of unconsciousness, I guess? Because him being in so much pain that he passed out obviously did not freak me out _at all_."

"He'll be fine," Danneel said gently. "But I'll leave you to get him out of his wet clothes and into bed so you can see for yourself. I'll be outside with Aldis when you're done."

She ducked out of the open door, leaving Jared with a passed-out maybe-boyfriend and approximately a million questions about yetis and princesses and the recovery rate for someone with a broken ankle. 

Taking it one step at a time, he cut Jensen's snow-damp pants off instead of having to maneuver them around his broken ankle and then stripped him down to his boxers and tee with the reasoning that Jensen would hopefully be less likely to freak out if he didn't wake up to find himself completely naked. It was surprisingly easy to tuck him up in bed with his head on the pillow and the blankets pulled right up to his chin, and Jared stroked his fingers through his hair as he watched Jensen sleep.

"Okay, next time," he whispered, more for his own benefit than Jensen's, "we are going on a date to an uninhabited planet made entirely of foam where there is absolutely no chance you can get injured. Good? Good."

**+++**

By the time Jared emerged from the bedroom, Danneel and Aldis had guns in their hands again. He suspected that this was not a good sign.

"So some answers would be really great right about now," he said, folding his arms and leaning against the faux-wooden wall of the cabin. "And the fact that I'm still demanding answers while you're both holding guns should be taken as a good indicator of how fucking confused I am right now."

They both had the decency to slide their guns back in their holsters, which went some way to reassuring him, and Danneel perched on an arm of the couch as she asked, "Where do you want us to start?"

"The giant people-eating snow monster seems like a good place to start."

"It doesn't actually eat people," Aldis said. "At least we don't think it does. We haven't really found all that many bodies yet. Right now we're working off the assumption that there's a lair involved."

"But you're sure it's a yeti?" Jared ran a hand through his hair. "I mean, a _yeti_? Seriously?"

"It matches all the lore," Danneel said with a shrug. "We were skeptical at first too but we even brought in a yetiologist from Acadia 12 to confirm."

"The dude nearly wet himself when he saw the findings," Aldis said. "It was awkward for everyone."

Jared shook his head. "But why is it here? What does it want?"

"We don't know," Danneel admitted. "The yeti guy said there have been loads of reports lately of creatures showing up in places they shouldn't be-"

Jared frowned. "Like a skopora in a tiny village or a couple of vampyra in a human colony?"

"Pretty much. No-one knows what's causing it but we guess that's how a yeti ended up here. We've been hunting it for weeks now but it's not the easiest thing to track."

"How did you find us?" Jared asked. "You showed up out of nowhere…"

Aldis looked sheepish. "Yeah, that was our bad. We set up a guard patrol just above the atmosphere to intercept ships and redirect them to safer ports near the cities but the patrol guys must've been sleeping on the job. We headed out to find you as soon as your ship showed up on our scanners -- I'm sorry we didn't get there before that thing grabbed your friend."

Jared rubbed the back of his neck. He hated accepting apologies on Jensen's behalf. “It's okay.” He hesitated for a second before offering, “Is there anything I can do to help you catch it? I know you probably don't think much of the guy who managed to get his partner attacked by a yeti but I've had some experience with solving these kinds of problems.”

Aldis nodded. "Sure, if you're up for it. I was just about to head out to see if I could pick up its trail -- you're welcome to tag along." He grinned. "The princess here can look after your friend."

Danneel's eyebrows shot up. "Hey, you're not leaving me here. I'm a better tracker than you and you know it, Hodge."

"Okay, first, that was one time," Aldis shot back. "I looked better in heels than you that one time at your cousin's party but you don't see me bringing it up every week. And second, have you met your grandmother? I know you're not next in line for the throne but that doesn't mean I'm gonna risk crossing her by letting anything happen to you."

Danneel sighed. "She isn't that bad."

"Oh, you wanna tell that to the security dude who let your brother get stabbed last year?"

"It was only in the arm-"

"Apparently she didn't care where it was," he said firmly. "I like my junk. It is very good junk and I would like it to stay attached to my body so you're going to sit here and help this guy's friend and not get kidnapped by a snow monster." 

Danneel opened her mouth but Aldis kept talking even as he softened a little, "Look, I know you wanna protect the people. I get it, really I do, and I wanna help with that, but one of us needs to stay here and I'd prefer if it was you instead of me." He rested his hands on her hips and looked at her hopefully. "Please? I'll owe you one?"

With a quiet sigh, Danneel finally relented. "Fine. But only because you asked nicely." She passed Jared her gun and squeezed Aldis' arm. "You two better come back alive or else."

Jared wasn't sure that Danneel's 'or else' would be worse than being torn apart by a yeti but he nodded anyway. "Yes, ma'am." With a final glance back at the bedroom door, he asked, "If he wakes up, can you tell him I'll be back soon? We- I-" He cleared his throat. "Just take care of him, okay?"

Danneel seemed to be sympathetic to his current situation when she said honestly, "I will. We'll be right here safe and sound when you get back."

"Awesome. Great." Rubbing his damp palms on his pants, Jared wondered how he managed to sweat so much even when he was on a planet which was ninety percent snow. "Guess we'll see you soon."

Danneel waved them off as they headed back out towards the ship, and Jared tried to coax his mind away from the constant loop of Jensen-centered worry and towards more proactive, problem-solving thoughts.

It was impossible to completely stop fretting about Jensen but Jared’s morale was lifted when Aldis pulled the door closed, gunned the engine, and said with enthusiasm, "How about we go find us a yeti?"

+++

  
Upon waking up half-dressed in a strange bed, Jensen experienced a split-second of surety that he had been sold.

The fear faded away almost as quickly as it had arisen when his mind woke up enough to remind him that he was with Jared, not with the army or with Somerville, but he was still left with a feeling of unease when he looked around the room to find that Jared wasn't anywhere in sight.

"Jared?"

Sitting up in bed, he winced at the stiffness of his limbs and then peered under the blankets with a frown to inspect the strange weight on his foot. 

He swallowed at the memory of his crushed ankle, of being dragged down under the snow for so long he thought he'd die, and of the splintering agony of his bones being forced back into place, but he blinked in disbelief when he found he could now wiggle his toes inside the boot-shaped device without any pain. His leg felt hot, like the peak of a fever or the swollen heat of an infection, and he hoped that was a good sign as far as healing was concerned.

Being careful of his foot, he swung himself out of bed and limped over to the bedroom door, supporting himself on whatever furniture he could find as he went in search of Jared. His foot began to ache more with every step but he bit his lip as he peeked out of the door. "Jared?"

He jumped in surprise when a woman appeared in front of him and only avoided falling by her hand wrapping around his arm to hold him upright. "Jensen! What are you doing out of bed?"

Remembering her identity (and his own manners), Jensen ducked into a shaky bow. "Your Highness."

Danneel waved away his attempt at courtesy. "You don't need to 'your highness' me. Come sit down."

As embarrassed as he was to accept the help of a princess, Jensen had to admit that he probably wouldn't have made it to the couch without her support. He dropped down with a concealed wince but his heart sank a little when he looked around the room without catching sight of Jared. 

It wouldn't be the first time he'd been given away but the prospect made his stomach churn. "Is Jared- Did he-"

"He went out with Aldis," Danneel said with a smile that definitely seemed more reassuring than sadistic. "He said to tell you he'll be back soon."

Jensen let out a slow breath and tried to hide his relief. "Where did he go?" he asked, carefully tucking his legs up on the couch. "Does he need help?"

Danneel shook her head and pulled her legs up on the couch too. "Nah. They went out to track the yeti." Jensen's eyes widened. "Don't worry, they're not gonna fight it again. Chances are they're just going to pick up the trail for a while until the thing disappears again."

"Oh." Jensen looked down, still uneasy about the idea of Jared out there hunting for a yeti but not wanting to challenge the princess. "I…" 

He trailed off. After years of enforced silence, making conversation wasn't his forte.

Fortunately, Danneel took pity on him and Jensen felt pathetically grateful when she shuffled to face him and began, "I guess I should fill you in on this whole yeti situation, huh."

He gave a tiny shrug. "If that's okay?"

"Are you kidding? Who doesn't love to talk about giant people-stealing snow-monsters?" she deadpanned and Jensen smiled. "Do you know anything about them?"

Jensen shook his head, cheeks burning red, but instead of dwelling on his ignorance, Danneel reassured him, "Don't worry, I barely knew anything about them either when this one showed up. We brought in a yetiologist for a reason, y'know?"

She stretched her legs out on the couch, far enough that her feet brushed against Jensen's good ankle, and Jensen was proud of himself for not pulling back at the contact. He rarely spoke to Jeff without Jared present, let alone anyone else, and as Danneel began to explain the habits of a yeti (complete with hand motions), Jensen let himself relax. 

It was nice to pretend that they were equals.

**+++**

"So how does yeti-hunting work exactly?"

The snow crunched beneath the forcefield of Jared's shoes as he clambered out of the ship and followed Aldis down to where they'd been attacked before.

"I mean, I've hunted stuff before. Deer, flodbears, enchanted ponicorns - y'know, the usual things - but I gotta say, a yeti is a new one for me."

"Join the club," Aldis said with a shrug. "We still don't know that much about it, except that it doesn't like heat." He held up a gun and then his scanner. "The bullets are way hotter than your standard blaster bolts - you saw what happened when it got wounded - and the scanner lets us check the density of everything under the snow. Mostly we just find a lot of rocks but if we know it's in the area, this can help us track it."

"Like when you found Jensen," Jared said with a nod. 

He settled into his stride as Aldis led them further along the slope of the valley and looked over when Aldis asked, "You and Jensen, huh? What's the deal there?"

"I could ask you the same about you and Danneel." Aldis hid a smile and Jared grinned. "Hey, she's a beautiful girl, dude." He crinkled his nose. "Beautiful princess? Beautiful girl-princess?"

"Right," Aldis teased. "Because there are so many guy-princesses out there."

"Hey, you never know," Jared said with a smile. "And quit dodging the question."

"Oh, like you're dodging the question about you and Jensen?"

He had a point. "You answer mine and I'll answer yours?"

Aldis eyed him suspiciously but then nodded. "Fine. It's not like we're actually gonna find anything out here anyway. Danneel and I are friends. Really, really good friends but just friends all the same. Your turn."

"You call that an answer? C'mon, man, I want details. How long have you known her? Did you ever think about being more than friends?"

"Not that you're being pushy or anything, obviously," Aldis said, not unkindly. "We've known each other since we were little kids. My mom's sister-in-law is, like, twenty-third in line for the throne so our families ended up letting me and Danneel hang out together since we're the same age."

Jared scrunched his nose up as a thought occurred. "Are you guys-"

"There's no blood relation," Aldis said quickly. "Just a whole load of marriages. Trust me, I checked."

Jared raised his eyebrows. "You checked, did you? What, just in case you happened to fall and end up dating Danneel?"

"Shut up," Aldis muttered. "I told you, we're just friends."

"But you want to be more than friends, right?" Jared said, elbowing him in the side. "Ask her, man."

"Right, because I'm gonna take advice from a guy who manages to get attacked by a yeti within ten seconds of touching down. That's totally smart."

"Hey, there is zero correlation between how alluring yetis find me and my ability to offer advice on people's love-lives," Jared said. "And it was way more than ten seconds."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Aldis said, sounding anything but. "What was it, twelve seconds? Fourteen?"

Jared rolled his eyes and changed the subject. "Talking of yetis, this hunt isn't exactly what I'd call fruitful."

"We're following one of the tunnels it dug under the snow," Aldis answered. "I don't know that we're gonna find it today but the more I know about its habits and hunting grounds, the easier it'll be to stop it. Now quit changing the subject. You know I'm a failure when it comes to asking Danneel out but what's the situation with you and Jensen? You two looked pretty cuddly in the back of the ship, s'all I'm saying."

"We do cuddle," Jared admitted. "But that's where it ends. I mean, I like him - he's a great guy - but we're taking it slow. Really, really slow. Slow enough that I don't even know if Jensen thinks I'm interested in him."

"Then step it up," Aldis said as though it was obvious. (Admittedly, with most other people, it probably would be.) "Sweep him off his feet." He paused. "Maybe literally if his ankle doesn't heal up quick enough."

Jared sighed. "It's complicated."

"When isn't it?" Glancing down at the scan to make sure they were on the right track, Aldis faced him. "All right, man, let's hear it."

Jared took a breath. There really wasn't a nice way to phrase this. "Jensen was a slave."

As expected, Aldis came to an abrupt halt and looked at Jared with barely concealed disgust. "He's your _slave_?"

"No, no, no," Jared said quickly. "He _was_ a slave. He isn't anymore."

"He used to be your slave?" Aldis' eyes narrowed. "Gotta tell you, man, you're not winning yourself any sympathy from me here. I don't know why the kid hasn't put twenty fuckin' galaxies between the two of you if you used to own him."

"I never owned him," Jared said, feeling flustered. Not that he blamed Aldis for being pissed about Jensen's situation; he just wanted the anger directed at the right target. "I rescued him from his owner on a Class 4. He had it rough back there but I haven't touched him, I swear."

Some of the anger faded from Aldis' face and he started walking again with the quiet apology, "Sorry, man. We had a group from some VSL society pass through here a while back and I swear on the gods, I wanted to punch every single owner on that ship."

"Where's a yeti when you need one?" Jared joked grimly. "Don't worry about it - I'd be mad as hell if I thought the guy next to me was an owner."

"What happened to his previous master?" he asked. "With your line of work, I figure there gotta be some gory details there, right?"

Jared smiled tightly. "Unfortunately not gory enough."

They followed the hidden yeti-tunnels down the slope of the valley as Jared filled him in on Lord Somerville and how he'd met Jensen, as well as the brief history of their non-relationship thus far. By the time he'd got to the explanation of their maybe-date, Aldis was looking at him with a mixture of disbelief and amusement.

"Well, congratulations, man. Good work falling for the one guy in the universe you probably shouldnt't hook up with."

Jared sighed, trudging further down the slope. "Come on, there have gotta be worse people for me to have a crush on. Like genocidal maniacs or guys who kick puppies. Or Jeff."

"Point," Aldis said. "But you're still diving in the complicated end of the dating pool here."

Jared smiled hopefully. "You know what they say. The course of true love…"

"Follows the turbulent flow of the Mygon Delta," Aldis filled in then raised his eyebrows. "Oh. It's true love now? That's not at all crazy. You, my friend, are _totally_ sane."

"I-"

Jared's attempt at self-defense was lost to a sudden low rumble that made the snow shift under his feet. 

Aldis' scanner let out a beep, followed by a second and a third and a fourth, quicker and quicker as whatever it was scanning got closer and closer. Pulling his gun out, Jared looked around at the still valley but his heart-rate only increased with the knowledge that the creature remained hidden beneath the snow.

"Guess you should hope I'm not crazy," he said with as much levity as he could summon up, "because I'm all you've got right now."

**+++**

"-then Aldis comes running in holding Pepo. And Pepo's squeaking and flailing his little furry gamjo arms because he can smell me and probably wants to be petted, but Aldis comes to a stop, holds Pepo out to the ambassador and says, 'Princess Danneel, sir'."

Jensen laughed. "Really? Did he believe that?"

Danneel nodded innocently. "Oh, yeah. For all of the five seconds it took Pepo to sink his teeth into Aldis' thumb then scamper away to where I was hiding behind the curtain." She grinned. "Aldis still shows off that scar like a war wound."

Jensen leaned back against the couch with a smile. Over the course of the conversation, they seemed to have edged closer and closer to each other, with the result that they were both now curled up in the middle of the couch as Danneel told him all about their encounter with the Silthian ambassador and her pet gamjo, Pepo.

"How old were you?" he asked.

"I was nineteen, Aldis was eighteen," she answered. "Just about old enough for us to still get away with doing dumb shit. I mean, who doesn't do something stupid when they're eighteen, right?"

Jensen gave her a weak smile. For the most part, it was easy enough to forget about the details of his past, to keep the specifics shut away behind a door he never wanted to open again, but it took fresh effort to push back the memory of all the 'stupid somethings' he'd been punished for when he was eighteen. "Right."

Danneel reached out to give his leg a gentle squeeze. "Hey, you okay?"

"Yeah." He nodded. "I'm fine. Sorry."

"You sure?" Her hand was a warm weight on his thigh and there was honest concern in her eyes when she asked, "Did I say something to upset you?"

The scrutiny made his chest tighten with nerves but Jensen shook his head and repeated, "I'm fine." Remembering how reassuring Jared's smile could be, he forced a smile of his own and squeezed her hand in return. "Really."

"Well, good," Danneel said, tilting her head and giving him a soft smile. "Because I'd definitely like to avoid fucking this up if possible."

Jensen blinked. "Fucking what up?"

Danneel's cheeks flushed pink as she lowered her eyes. "I don't get chance to meet a lot of guys here," she admitted. "And when I do, half of them are scared off because I'm a princess and the other half just wanna get in my pants so they can tell their buddies they banged royalty." She met his eyes again. "I just- It's nice to spend time with someone like you."

He wanted to tell her how he was equally grateful for the chance to spend time with someone who didn't know about his past and didn't look at him with pity or distaste, but he bit his lip to stop the words falling out and mumbled instead, "Me too."

Danneel smiled at that, bright and beautiful, and Jensen's eyes dropped to her lips, only now aware of how close she was to him. 

"Great," she teased. "I'd hate to think me talking at you for hours would be a chore." She reached up to smooth his hair back down but her fingers lingered against his skin as she asked softly, "You're okay with this? You sure I didn't upset you before?"

Too worried about messing this up by talking, Jensen shook his head then nodded it, confused about which question he was supposed to be answering. Danneel pulled back a little and he stammered out, "I-I'm not upset." He tried to sound a little more confident and Jared-like when he added, "I'm okay with this."

He wasn't totally sure that was the truth but it seemed to be the answer Danneel was looking for. It took all Jensen had to stay still when she closed the distance between them and his eyes fluttered shut at the soft press of her lips against his.

Dirty shame spread through him, creeping over his skin and twisting through his insides at the thought of lying by omission to a princess, of not telling her what he'd done or what he'd been. However, when she slanted her lips against his, kissing a little deeper and waiting for a response, it wasn't the shame which made him pull away, wide-eyed and apologetic.

"I'm sorry," he said quickly, wiping his mouth and hating the confusion on her face. "I'm really sorry, princess. I-" He couldn't find the right words to explain his feelings so settled for a helpless shrug and the meek answer, "Jared…"

"Ah."

The confusion disappeared from her eyes to be replaced with knowing understanding. "So when you said you and Jared were just colleagues…"

"We are," Jensen said hastily. "I just-"

"Want to be more than just colleagues?" she filled in, thankfully without any anger in her voice. "Trust me, I know how that goes."

"I'm sorry," he said again, feeling wretched. "This is all kind of new to me but I shouldn't have said yes. It wasn't fair to you."

"Maybe not," she said but gave his leg another friendly squeeze, "but I guess you can't control when you have big romantic epiphanies."

"You're not mad?"

Danneel laughed. "Not mad, Jensen. I promise. Honestly, I think it's kind of sweet - you and Jared seem like you'd be good together."

Jensen wasn't too sure about that - he was pretty sure Jared viewed him in a similar category to Harley as Things He Had Rescued and Was Now Relatively Fond Of - but he summoned up a smile anyway. "Maybe."

"Definitely," Danneel said with another bright smile. "Assuming he and Aldis get back in one piece, he's all yours."

**+++**

"Where is it?"

Jared shifted his weight from foot to foot as he looked at the undisturbed snow around him. If there had been a table present, he would have been the first to jump on it. "Where did it go?"

The beeps of Aldis' scanner had changed to a constant whine from how close the creature was. He flicked off the sound and pointed uncertainly to a spot just behind Jared. "Right there- No, wait." He shook his head. "It's moving too fast to get an accurate reading."

"Just tell me where to shoot," Jared hissed, not sure if the yeti could track them by their voices.

Aldis pointed to Jared's left and then traced a path down to somewhere around Jared's feet. "That looks like as good a place as any." He met Jared's eyes and readied his gun. "On three?"

"One."

"Two."

They both pulled their triggers on the third count and Jared held his breath as the heated bullets plunged down through the snow.

Unlike when Danneel had been the one firing, there was no sound from the monster under the snow and Jared shifted back cautiously. Aldis fired again, two shots left then right of his first bullet, and Jared struggled to keep his balance as the ground shifted beneath them. "Where-"

The wind was knocked out of him in a rush and Jared found himself blinking dumbly up at the pale blue of the sky before he even realized he'd fallen.

"Jared!"

Jared just caught sight of Aldis running towards him before he felt a pair of cold hands wrap around his calves. Aldis fired, bright bullets flying past Jared to where the yeti's thick arms now emerged from the snow, but he cried out as the creature started to pull him down through the snow. 

It hurt. The yeti's strong, heavy fingers gripped tight enough to bruise, giving Jared no chance to kick out in defence, but he clutched desperately at the snow as he felt himself being dragged deeper. "Shoot it!" he yelled. "Come on, man!"

"You think I'm not trying?" Aldis yelled back. 

He shot again and again, peppering the snow with bullets as Jared was dragged into the snow up to chest level. One hit its mark and Jared slumped forward with relief when the creature let out a low growl and released his ankles, and he struggled to haul himself up out of the snow and pick up his gun.

His legs shook as he pulled himself up onto the forcefield of his shoes, as though the yeti's fingers were still locked tight around his calves, and he struggled to catch his breath while he looked at Aldis. "Guess you hit it?"

Aldis shook his head. "Not a kill shot." He kicked at the upturned snow until he found a patch soaked through with fresh gray blood. "Wounded the bastard at least."

"Is that it?" Jared asked, remembering how quick the yeti had taken off last time. "Has it gone?"

"Looks that way." He glanced down at the scanner with a frown. "There's nothing under the snow except for a few rocks."

"Why are you frowning at that? Frowning is not a good, happy, yeti-free sign." 

"I should've been able to follow its exit path," Aldis said, looking up at him. "It shouldn't be able to move that quick, it…"

He trailed off as his mouth fell open, gaze fixed on a point somewhere about Jared's left shoulder, and Jared's heart dropped when he whirled around.

There was a reason Aldis couldn't find anything beneath the snow, since the yeti was now standing on top of it. 

Its broad feet kept it from sinking and Jared swallowed hard as he looked up and up and up at the expanse of its body. It was pale from head to toe, its fur blending in with the white of the snow except for the small black circles of its eyes and the dark cave of its mouth. Blood ran down its leg in gray-white rivulets and Jared tightened his grip on his gun when he saw the scorch marks from the bullet wound, proof that they could hurt it.

The creature moved before Jared could raise his weapon to get off a shot. It swung its arm with the force of a wrecking-bot and Jared swore he felt the crack of his ribs as it caught his side to send him flying through the air. The cold of the landing was sharp against the hot flare of pain in his chest but he was pulled up and out of the snow a second later when the yeti grabbed his arm and hauled him upwards.

His arm felt like it was going to detach from his body as he dangling in the thing's grip, disoriented and helpless, but he let out a bellow of pain when the creature grabbed his body with its other hand and started to pull, intent on ripping his arm right out of its socket.

"Hey, Sasquatch!"

If he'd been able to talk past the pain, Jared would've pointed out that he didn't really appreciate joke nicknames when he was about to have his arm torn off, but when the creature turned its head at Aldis' shout, Jared realized he hadn't been the intended target.

He saw the flash of Aldis' muzzle before another bullet sank home, right in the yeti's shoulder. It howled, high and angry, and Jared's eyes widened at his first, up-close look at the creature's dark gray gape of a mouth and the long, sharp teeth parting like the bars of a cage ready to slam shut.

It threw Jared aside and wheeled on Aldis, who backed off as quick as he could, gun raised and aimed at the creature's head.

Jared struggled up to his knees in time to see the gun let out nothing but a click when Aldis pulled the trigger.

"Motherfucker," Aldis swore. He lobbed the empty gun at the charging yeti hard enough that Jared heard it thunk against its chest, and then retreated faster as he yelled, "I'm outta options here, man!"

Still reeling from the pain in his arm and chest, Jared dragged himself across the snow to where his own gun was lying abandoned. With all the force he could muster, he slung the gun across to Aldis with the shout, "Heads up!"

The effort of the throw pulled at the aching muscles along his side and he collapsed into the snow with a groan as Aldis snatched the gun out of the air and pointed it at the yeti's chest.

It bore down on him fast and when the gun went off in the tangle, Jared couldn't tell who it had hit.

At least not until he heard the roar.

The yeti crashed down hard, narrowly avoiding Aldis who was lying on the floor, looking stunned by his own shot. It sank into the snow, blood dripping from the wound in its chest, and bared its teeth in fury as it let out one final roar. It had seemed loud before, when it was under the snow and only suffering from a small wound, but out in the open it was deafening.

It echoed through the valley, loud enough that it seemed like the peaks themselves were rattling. Jared clamped his hands over his ears as the ground shuddered beneath them and grimaced when even his insides seemed to churn at the vibrations of the yeti's roar.

He looked up when the creature finally slipped into deathly silence, catching Aldis' eyes and offering him a weak smile. "We did it." He huffed out a breath and grinned. "You did it. Awesome shot, man."

Aldis was on his feet in an instant but Jared couldn't catch his shout over the rush of blood in his ears.

"What? Be happy, dude - you just killed a yeti." He lay back with a tired smile. "A _yeti_. I mean, seriously."

"Jared!" He caught Aldis' voice above the rumble which seemed to be getting louder. "Stay with me!"

"Stay with you? Look, I don't think we're that close yet-"

He stuttered to a halt when he felt the ground shake. He glanced at the yeti, worried that it was somehow a zombie hybrid like that rabid kangaroo in Polnico, but blinked in disbelief at what he saw.

The mountain was moving.

The snow was crashing towards them, shaken loose by the yeti's roar and now moving towards them faster than Jared could comprehend. It swept down the valley like a flood and Jared tried to brace himself for the impact as best he could - being buried alive in an avalanche wasn't included in his space adventurer handbook.

Aldis' hand closed loosely around his wrist and Jared sent a final mental apology to Jeff and Jensen (in the hopes that one of them would eventually develop retroactive psychic powers) before his world was swallowed up by a wall of white.

+++

  
Jared blinked his eyes open and was promptly surprised that he had actually managed that.

He felt floaty, like he was now a Jared-sized balloon bobbing peacefully through the air, and he smiled at the thought of a host of inflatable Jareds being carried in a a parade. Someone should arrange that for him. Maybe Jensen would do it if he asked nicely.

At the thought of Jensen's name, happy pink shapes bounced cheerfully through Jared's field of vision. He smiled again. He liked Jensen and he liked bouncy shapes so it was good that the bouncy shapes seemed to like Jensen too. After all, Jensen was a very likeable person. 

Trying to remember how he got to a world full of bouncy shapes, Jared frowned when the only thing that came to mind was a crushing rush of whiteness. There had been a yeti, and a gunshot, and Aldis shouting at him, and then a tidal wave of snow sweeping down the mountain to swallow them whole. 

Realizing that the world around him seemed to be a kind of rich magenta color (complete with dancing pink shapes) rather than the expected blanket of whiteness, Jared blinked again. His eyes opened for real this time, and he pouted a little at the conclusion that the happy shapes had just been a dream.

Unfortunately, the real world didn't provide him with any white, snowy landscapes either, and Jared's heart sank as he looked up at the wooden beams of the ceiling. 

He was dead.

He hadn't given a lot of thought to the afterlife, really. He'd hoped his family were at peace and when he'd been a teenager, he'd liked to think they could still hear him when he spoke to them, wherever they were, but he hadn't considered what it would actually be like to be dead.

As it turned out, it wasn't too shabby.

The ceiling above him looked nice enough and as he regained enough coordination to wiggle his limbs, he was pleased to find that his yeti-inflicted injuries hadn't carried over into the afterlife with him. However, there was something heavy resting against his side and he summoned up enough energy to look down at whatever was intruding in his afterlife. 

When the intruder turned out to be a naked Jensen, Jared quickly upgraded his opinion of the afterlife from 'not too shabby' to 'pretty fucking excellent'.

The two of them were in a bed, with Jared's head resting on the pillows and Jensen's head pillowed on his shoulder as he curled up against him, fast asleep. He let out a snuffly noise when Jared raked his fingers through his hair, scritching the nape of his neck a little in the way that the real Jensen always seemed to like, and Jared grinned. He had obviously constructed himself a very good imaginary Jensen.

They were both shirtless, and while the bed seemed warm enough to be naked in, Jared peeked under the blankets anyway to check on the state of their clothes.

It turned out he was down to his underwear, with Jensen also clad only in his shorts, and he took a moment to enjoy the heat of Jensen's bare skin against his own before guilt kicked in. 

As nice as it was for him to spend a happily-ever-afterlife with a naked Jensen, his thoughts drifted to what he'd left behind. Jeff would be back to running his ship alone and while he knew Jeff would be less than impressed at him surviving a yeti attack only to be flattened by some rogue snow, Jared couldn't help but miss the grouchy old bastard.

And then there was Jensen. A lump rose up in his throat at the thought of Jensen waiting back at the cabin in vain, and he hoped Danneel and Jeff between them would manage to take care of him now that Jared was gone.

He sniffled a little - it was his afterlife and he could cry if he wanted to, dammit - and then turned his attention to the imaginary Jensen in his bed, cuddling him closer to make himself feel better. Jensen slept on, breathing out in slow, steady breaths, and Jared stroked his fingers down his side before curling his hand loosely around his hip.

He frowned when his fingers brushed against a raised patch of skin on Jensen's hip and he peered down under the covers in confusion.

The circular burn on Jensen's hipbone was glossy and smooth, and Jared traced the outline of it as he tried to work out where it had come from. He'd seen most of Jensen's body before, including the lattice of scars on his bare back, but as he thought back over their time together, he couldn't ever remember seeing Jensen's hip, scarfree or otherwise.

Either way, his imagination should not be putting brand marks on Jensen and Jared squeezed his eyes shut in the hopes that the mark would just disappear. 

Unfortunately it was still there when he opened them again and he shivered as he drew the logical conclusion. 

"Jensen?" He nudged his shoulder carefully, knowing how jumpy the real Jensen got when people surprised him while he was sleeping. "Can you hear me?"

He held his breath as Jensen stirred. He was in the middle of trying to figure out how to phrase "Hey, are you dead too?" in the least alarming way possible when Jensen finally opened his eyes and asked sleepily, "Jared?"

Still flat on his back, Jared gave him a dorky little wave. "Hi."

"Oh God."

Jensen was on top of him a split-second later, knees astride Jared's torso and a stunned smile on his lips. He rested his hands on Jared's chest and shifted uncertainly, like he wanted to hug him but couldn't quite work out how he was supposed to do that while Jared was horizontal. He seemed to solve that problem pretty fast though and before Jared could offer to sit up and be hugged, Jensen crushed their lips together. 

He'd been kissed by Jensen before, a quick, grateful peck when Jensen's collar had been removed, but this was a completely new experience. Jensen kissed like his afterlife depended on it, fast and desperate and needy as he licked his way inside Jared's mouth and slid his hands into Jared's hair.

Bemused by the fact that possibly-real Jensen had gone from a timid ex-slave who didn't like to be touched to a guy who kissed like it was going out of style, Jared used all the willpower he had to wriggle away from Jensen's oh-so-talented mouth. 

Jensen looked down at him, eyes bright and lips slick from the kiss, and spoke at the exact same second as Jared.

"You're alive!"

"Are you dead?"

Jensen frowned. "What?"

"Are you dead?" Jared repeated lamely. The more he said it out loud, the more awkward it sounded. "It's just that I'm obviously dead and you're here and you have a brand on your hip that I haven't seen before so that means you're real Jensen, not imaginary Jensen, and if you're real, you must be dead too." Jensen looked down at himself as though checking whether he was dead or not, and Jared asked again, "Are you? Dead, I mean."

Jensen clambered off him and backed up, now seeming far less happy and confident and willing to give kisses, and Jared wished he'd been smart enough to keep his mouth shut. 

"I'm not dead," Jensen said, wrapping a blanket around himself and perching on the end of the bed. "You aren't dead either, Jared."

Jared blinked. "But the snow." He mimed a big giant avalanche squashing teeny little Jared and Aldis. "It hit us."

Jensen shook his head and his smile reappeared as he inched closer to rest his hand on Jared's legs, apparently wanting some kind of physical reassurance. "Aldis saved you," he said. "He pulled you out and got you back here on the ship."

"Hey," said a voice from the doorway and Jared pushed himself up on his elbows to see Danneel and Aldis standing by the door. "Don't sell yourselves short," Aldis said, and Jared realized he was leaning on Danneel for support. "The rest of y'all helped too. We would've crashed out there in the snow if it wasn't for Danneel steering us back in, and we definitely would've frozen to death if Jensen hadn't helped out."

"I'm guessing I didn't help?" Jared said with a groan, and Aldis shrugged.

"Sorry, man. You did help dig us out of the snow for a while but then you were basically unconscious the whole time."

"Except for when you woke up and told us to tell Jensen you loved him and to tell Jeff that he better take care of your dog," Danneel added. "That was a fun twenty seconds."

Jared's cheeks heated in embarrassment and he glanced over to where Jensen was staring intently at his still-healing ankle like it held the key to the mysteries of the universe.

"Oh. Sorry?"

"Don't worry about it," Danneel said. "I guess you're feeling better now? We gave you some injections for your ribs and shoulder so if the numbness starts wearing off, let us know and we'll top you up." She looked between him and Jensen with a knowing smirk. "Well, now that you're not dead, we'll give you two some alone time."

Aldis looked at her. "Alone time? Why are they getting alone time? This was a group near-death experience, okay. We should be bonding."

Danneel rolled her eyes. "C'mon, hero, you can do some manly bonding later. Give them some peace."

With an entirely unsubtle wink in Jensen's direction, she coaxed Aldis out of the door again, and Jared turned to Jensen as he struggled to sit up. "I think I'm gonna need you to fill in some blanks here for me."

Jensen hurried off of the bed and busied himself with plumping Jared's pillows up and positioning them to support his back. "You need to be careful," he said in a way which managed to be scolding and endearing at once. "Your ribs are broken and your shoulder was dislocated when we brought you in - you need to rest."

"Jensen." He grabbed his wrist and rested his head back against the pillows to look up at him. "Stop fretting."

"But you-"

"I'm fine," he said firmly. "Okay, I still kind of feel like I'm floating but that's from the drugs, not from the afterlife, so I'm good. Stop worrying about me."

Jensen sat back down on the bed, fingers twisted together in his lap and head down in apology. "I'm sorry."

Correct responses were evidently failing Jared today. Too tired to attempt anything subtle, he reached out to take Jensen's hand and gave it a squeeze. "You don't need to apologize." His lips curved in a small smile. "C'mon, fill me in on everything I missed. And no skimping on the heroic details."

Jensen smiled at that and Jared let himself slip into a slightly dazed state of relaxation as Jensen told him what he knew. 

Once the avalanche had hit, Aldis had got them out with the help of some giant inflatable bubble shield which neither Jared nor Jensen fully understood but which all Halk citizens carried with them when venturing out into the snow. Avalanche rescue was apparently a crucial part of their standard curriculum. They'd made it to the ship and headed back but since Jared was unconscious and Aldis hypothermic, they'd patched through a Com link to Danneel who'd enabled remote steering and piloted the ship back to the cabin for them.

Jared scooted further up the bed and paid a little more attention to the narrative when Jensen finally reached his own role in proceedings upon their arrival back at the cabin. 

"Danneel got Aldis out," Jensen said, playing with the frayed edge of the blanket. "Then she helped me carry you through into here. You were so pale and so cold, I thought-" He shook his head. "Then she told me how to treat you for hypothermia and your injuries. I did it and then you woke up."

He sounded conclusive, like that was all Jared could possibly want to know about the situation, and Jared rolled his eyes with a smile. "C'mere." He pulled Jensen in closer, until he was tucked under the covers with his back resting against the good side of Jared's chest. "So you gave me injections of painkillers, reset my shoulder, rubbed me down with warming agent, heated my bed, and then climbed in to sleep next to me to help restore my body temperature?"

Jensen nodded.

"And you did all that while I was lying there looking like a corpse?"

Jensen flinched but nodded again mutely. Jared kissed the side of his neck.

"You're awesome, you know that?"

Jensen shook his head. "Danneel and Aldis-"

"Saved me," Jared acknowledged. "I wouldn't be alive without them, I know that, but I wouldn't be alive without you either. There's no way Danneel could've taken care of the two of us at once. You did really good, Jensen."

He leaned in closer and smiled when Jensen relaxed a little more into his arms. "I know it was scary for you," he murmured. "Trust me, I was terrified when I pulled you out of the snow that first time. I'm sorry you had to go through that."

Jensen turned his head to face him and rested his hand on Jared's cheek as he said firmly, "I don't like when you nearly die. Stop it."

Jared grinned. "I'll do my best."

Jensen nodded, satisfied, and turned his attention to fixing Jared's blankets in a straight line. "Good. That's good."

Jared let him fix and straighten for a moment, knowing it was Jensen's way of coping with the overload of the day so far, before saying softly, "You kissed me."

Jensen's fingers froze for a second before he went back to his work with the blanket. "I couldn't hug you," he said. "That seemed like the second-best choice, like when you kissed Jeff after he came to last week."

Jared thought back to the relieved kiss he'd planted on Jeff's cheek when the antidote had kicked in and woken him up, then pictured kissing Jeff with as much enthusiasm Jensen had displayed a few minutes earlier. He shuddered.

"Hate to break it to you, man, but they were pretty different," he pointed out as tactfully as he could. Jensen kept his head lowered and Jared rested his hands over Jensen's to stop him fiddling with the blanket. "You know it's okay if you want to kiss me, right? I get that people have urges. I am very kissable."

That got a smile, and Jared breathed out. Conversations were not supposed to be harder to deal with than yetis. 

"Okay, so I'm assuming you wanted to kiss me? It wasn't some weird cultural quirk you picked up on Thuma and it's not a creepy submission thing Somerville had you do."

"I wanted to," Jensen confirmed in a small voice. He sounded wretched, like he was scared Jared was going to yell at him for it, but before Jared could offer any reassurance, he said in a stumbling rush, "I-I kissed the princess."

Jared's heart sank. The yeti and the avalanche had already ensured that this was a crappy first maybe-date but Jensen making out with someone else now secured it the spot of the worst first maybe-date of all time. Jared's love-life sucked.

"Oh," he said, trying to figure out the best way to stop cuddling Jensen in a borderline inappropriate way. Snuggling up to the significant others of royalty had never ended well for him in the past. "That's good. She seems awesome - I'm sure you guys will be happy together."

Shaking his head, Jensen shuffled back until he was facing Jared properly. "No, I- We aren't- I didn't want to kiss her."

Jared blinked. "You didn't want to kiss her?" Familiar anger flared up and he sat up straight, ready to go confront the princess, broken ribs be damned. "She forced you?"

"No! No," Jensen said, flustered. "She didn't force me into anything. I thought I wanted to kiss her but then I did kiss her and I realized I didn't want to." He looked up at him anxiously and said in a rush, "I wanted to kiss you instead."

"Oh." Eloquence was clearly Jared's forte that day.

"I'm sorry," Jensen continued when Jared wasn't fast enough at stringing a sentence together to convey his total enthusiasm for Jensen kissing him. "I shouldn't have kissed you. I know you don't need this right now with your injuries but I can move out of your bed and stay out of your way, or you can leave me somewhere if you want to, or-"

He was cut off with a yelp when Jared pounced. 

Words were too difficult given how inept they were both at conversation - even if he came straight out and said _Jensen, I'm really attracted to you and I would love to spend the whole of next week kissing you and even if I wasn't kind of in love with you, there is no way I would ever abandon you ever_ , there would probably be some misinterpretation somewhere - and so he let his lips do a different kind of talking.

Jensen's eyes were wide and confused when Jared pushed him back down against the pillows and he let out a disbelieving little squeak when Jared leaned in to seal their lips together in a kiss. 

Jensen froze for a long, gut-wrenching second, where Jared couldn't help but panic that he'd done the wrong thing, that he'd misread the signs and been too aggressive and gone too far and was a terrible, terrible person who should never be allowed to kiss anyone ever again, but he nearly collapsed in relief when Jensen kissed back.

It was softer than the wake-up kiss, a slower glide as Jensen tilted his head to let Jared lick at his lips and coax his mouth open, but judging by the way one of Jensen's hands threaded through his hair and gave a purposeful tug, his earlier enthusiasm didn't seem to be buried that far under the surface. Jared slotted his bare legs between Jensen's, letting him arch up against him as he pulled back to tease him by dropping featherlight kisses at the corners of his lips.

He felt Jensen smile against his mouth before he tightened his grip on his hair and pulled him down for a deeper kiss. Some of his usual timidity melted away, and Jared found himself fully in favor of helping Jensen develop this confidence further, especially if it required more awesome kisses. 

Jensen's hand rested on Jared's hip as he licked his mouth open to curl his tongue against Jared's, and Jared let himself float again, drifting between the light scrape of Jensen's nails across his scalp, the easy slip of their mouths, the pleased noise Jensen made when Jared cupped his jaw, and the warm, languid roll of their bodies on the bed together.

Lost in the enjoyable haze of high-quality pain medication and even higher quality kissing, Jared crinkled his nose when a bolt of agony had him plummeting back down from the high. Pulling away, he rolled off Jensen to land heavily on his back with a hand pressed to his broken ribs as he whimpered, "Ow…"

"Are you okay?" Jensen sat up sharply and patted over Jared's chest in concern. Jared probably shouldn't have enjoyed that so much. "Jared, are you okay? Did I hurt you?"

"I think we can blame that on a yeti rather than you," he said with a weak smile. "For future reference though, maybe you should go on top when I have broken ribs." He frowned. "Uh, not in the sex sense. Just in the physical-positioning-when-kissing sense."

"I get it." Jensen leaned down to kiss him on the forehead, looking happier than Jared ever remembered seeing him. If his body had been functioning correctly, he would definitely have pulled him down for more happy-making kisses. "I'll go get some more pain medication from the princess." He smoothed down the blankets again then limped out of bed to pull on a bathrobe. "Just stay put."

"I'm staying."

"Don't move."

Jared grinned as he watched Jensen pick his way over to the door, still wary of his broken ankle. "I'm not moving."

"I mean it," Jensen said in a stern tone that was completely undermined by the smile he couldn't seem to wipe off his face. "No hurting yourself."

"I promise I will not hurt myself in the five seconds it takes you to find Danneel," Jared solemnly swore. "Now go fetch me drugs already, man."

With a final look back, Jensen ducked out of the room. His footsteps stopped in seconds and Jared heard him mumble something he couldn't catch before he darted back into the room without any drugs and slammed the door behind him.

"What happened?" Jared asked, propping himself up as best he could. "Is it the yeti? Is it back?"

Jensen shook his head. "I- Uh, Danneel and Aldis looked like they didn't want to be disturbed."

Jared raised his eyebrows. "Oh." His eloquence was clearly improving since he followed it up with, "Wow. That was fast."

Jensen smiled. "I guess you come to some realizations when someone important to you gets caught in an avalanche and nearly dies."

"Huh. Weird," Jared teased. His side still throbbed with pain, spreading up along the curve of his ribs, but he reached out to Jensen with a groan. "C'mon. I'll settle for kisses instead of drugs, at least until Danneel and Aldis decide to keep it in their pants for more than five minutes."

The door creaked open and Jared looked over to see Danneel and Aldis standing there, evidently summoned by Jensen's awkward interruption. "Hey," Aldis protested, "I am a gentleman, thank you very much. It was one, fully-clothed kiss, unlike you two reprobates."

Jared wiped his mouth guiltily but smirked when he saw Jensen doing the same. "You guys worked it out then?"

Still taking a portion of Aldis' weight, Danneel nevertheless looked like the cat that got the kremita when she smiled broadly. "Yep." Her eyes darted to Jensen as she said, "Looks like I was due a romantic epiphany too."

Aldis' smile was dopey and Jared suspected he was on the same combination of pain meds and bliss when he said, "Baby, you can epiphany me any time you want to."

Danneel rolled her eyes and kissed him on the cheek. "Such a gentleman." Rummaging in her pocket, she held out a slim cylinder which Jared recognized as his much-needed injection for the pain. "Am I right in thinking you were looking for this?"

Jensen scrambled up to retrieve it as fast as his broken ankle would allow, and Jared sank back onto a wave of manufactured contentment with a low moan when he held the tube against his ribs and hit the activation button.

Aldis grimaced. "That was a noise I never needed to hear from you, man."

"Shush," Jared said, enjoying the way the numbness swallowed up the pain. He flailed a little as he reached for Jensen but relaxed when Jensen snuggled up next to him willingly. He really liked Jensen. Jensen was fantastic.

"So we'll head up to the city to let you heal better," Danneel said, obviously taking it upon herself to be the helpful one in the room. "I'm sure a big, comfortable hotel room would be better than this cabin but we should probably wait to travel until you're all awake enough to not grope your boyfriend quite so obviously in front of me," -Jared was surprised to find that, completely unbeknownst to him, his hand had drifted to Jensen's ass- "and to not fall unconscious on your girlfriend."

"M'totally conscious," Aldis mumbled. It wasn't very convincing.

Danneel gave him a fond kiss on the shoulder anyway, since that was the only part of him she could reach with ease, and Jared let his eyes fall shut as he heard her say, "Congrats on getting everything worked out, by the way."

He really did mean to congratulate her and Aldis in return, or to give Jensen another kiss, or to make some other polite response, but awakeness seemed to have joined forces with eloquence in deserting him. 

He was asleep in an instant.

**+++**

"I don't think this is going to end well."

Jared squared his shoulders and said with as much confidence as he could muster, "It'll be fine."

Jensen bit his lip. "Are you sure? Maybe we should wait…"

"No waiting," Jared said firmly. "We've been avoiding this for days." He offered Jensen a hopeful smile. "Anyway, what's the worst that could happen?"

Jensen stared at him.

"Okay, don't answer that," Jared said, now picturing some fairly dire worst-case scenarios. Possibly involving dismemberment. "Everything will be all right. Do you trust me?"

Jensen nodded, still looking nervous, and Jared took a final deep breath. "Okay. Ready?"

At Jensen's second nod, he reached forward. With one final prayer for success, he steeled himself and pressed the button on the Com.

It buzzed quietly on the sheets as it tried to make the connection, and Jared looked over to where Jensen was sitting crosslegged on the other end of the large bed. 

For the week they'd spent recuperating in Linn, one of Halk's primary cities, they'd been given one of the most comfortable hotel pods in the city. (Privately, Jared suspected that Danneel had booked them into the honeymoon suite but hadn't liked to dwell on that thought too much.) It had been a relatively slow process waiting for Jared's ribs and shoulder to heal and for Jensen's ankle to regain its full strength but since they'd spent most of that time lying in bed indulging in totally recuperative makeout sessions, Jared didn't have too many complaints.

They'd watched Danneel and Aldis on the newscasts almost every evening, where Danneel was praised for leading the mission to rid the planet of the yeti and Aldis was given medal after medal for his courage in finally killing it. (Jared had refused any publicity for his own involvement; there were enough warrants out for his arrest that he definitely didn't need his face on any intergalactic broadcasts if he could avoid it.) 

Danneel and Aldis had taken them out for a farewell dinner the previous night, to say thanks and to wish them well. Despite the fact that the interaction between Danneel and Aldis was pretty much the same as it had been before, except with more kissing, they seemed very happy together, and it was this that had finally motivated Jared to do what he should have done a week earlier: call Jeff.

They'd called him once already to explain why they wouldn't be back on the ship that first evening, which had to be the first time Jared had ever used 'I got attacked by a yeti' as a legitimate excuse for being late. However, they were due to head back home later that afternoon and Jared felt kind of guilty for not telling Jeff that his relationship with Jensen had progressed to the point where they had spent a whole week in bed together. (But not having sex. Their relationship hadn't got quite that far yet.)

And so, as they listened to the steady buzz of the Com, Jared did his best not to hide under the blankets in fear.

"Hello?"

"Hi!" Jared said, far too brightly. He coughed and tried again, "I mean, hey, Jeff. How's it going?"

"Fine," Jeff said briskly. "I finished up that pair of unexplained deaths in Langport a couple of days back and I'm just heading back from a doppelganger problem in Pl'ono. Which was great, by the way," he added sarcastically. "I really enjoy being mistaken for a doppelganger and thrown in jail. It's not like a second pair of hands would've helped there at all."

Jared rubbed the back of his neck. "Sorry, man," he said sheepishly. "Yeti."

"Yeah, yeah," Jeff teased. "Milk it while you can. You healing up all right?"

"Almost good as new," Jared said. "We'll take the ship back up to find you later today."

"About time," he muttered. "Is Jensen with you? Is his ankle fixed now?"

"Yes, sir," Jensen chimed in from the other side of the bed. "Uh, I mean, hi, Mr Morgan. It's Jensen."

" _Mr Morgan?_ " Jared whispered with a grin. "You know he's not actually my father, right?"

Jensen's cheeks heated and he gave Jared a gentle kick to the shin as Jeff's suspicious voice trickled out from the Com, "Jared, what did you do?"

"Me?" Jared tried to sound offended. It came out more chipmunk-ish that he would've liked. "Nothing!"

"Oh god, did you get married?"

"No!"

That didn't seem to appease Jeff, who only sounded more worried when he asked again, "Please tell me you didn't get him pregnant, Jared. I specifically told you not to get him pregnant. Jensen?" Jensen jumped at being addressed directly. "Jensen, did he get you pregnant? Goddammit, Jared-"

"He isn't pregnant," Jared interrupted, trying not to smile when Jensen looked down at his stomach and patted his very unpregnant belly in confusion. "Neither of us are pregnant. No sex, no marriage, no pregnancy, I promise."

"Oh." Jeff's annoyance faded fast now that he was apparently satisfied that Jared hadn't broken one of his three commandments for interacting with Jensen. "What's the problem then?"

Jared took a breath, still not sure how to phrase it. "Uh, me and Jensen, we-" Jensen moved across the bed to take his hand and tuck his legs up beside him, and Jared squeezed it gratefully. "We're dating."

There was a moment of silence on the Com and Jared braced himself from anything from apoplectic rage to delighted cheering. You never knew with Jeff.

It was therefore kind of underwhelming when Jeff replied simply, "Is that it?"

Jared frowned. "Well, yeah. It's pretty big news."

"Junior, you took the boy out on a date. You two dating as a result of that is not exactly a big surprise."

It was Jensen's turn to look confused. "You took me out on a date?"

Jeff laughed. "Wait, you didn't tell him it was a date?"

"I did!" Jared protested. "Maybe. Sort of." Jensen opened his mouth to speak and Jared corrected, "Okay, no. But I meant to. I just didn't want to pressure you, that's all."

"You didn't," Jensen said, still bemused. "I thought you just wanted me to come visit the planet with you - I didn't know it was a date."

"I didn't know if you knew what a date was," Jared blurted out. "I know there was the army and Somerville and everything, but I didn't want to be like any of them. I wanted to do it right but I didn't know what your version of 'right' was and-"

"For the love of-" Jeff huffed out a breath. "Jensen, do you want to date Jared?"

Jensen nodded.

"You need to speak into the Com, kid," Jeff said, not unkindly. "Astral projection is not one of my many skills."

"Oh. Yes," Jensen said nervously. "I want to date Jared."

"Even if he's incompetent enough to not actually tell you he's taking you on a date?"

Jensen looked over at Jared with a fond smile and linked their fingers together. "Yes."

"And you're fully aware you can say no at any time you want?"

Jensen snuggled in closer to Jared. "Yes."

"Jared, do you want to date Jensen?"

Jared leaned in to kiss Jensen on the cheek, then met his eyes. "Definitely."

"Even if that means improving your communication skills by about two hundred percent?"

Jensen kissed him at the corner of his lips as Jared said, "Yes."

"And you're fully aware Jensen stays on the ship as long as he wants, even if you two break up?"

Jensen climbed astride his thighs and Jared barely got out his answer before Jensen pulled him up into a kiss, "Yes!"

"Congratulations, I now pronounce you as officially dating," Jeff deadpanned. "You may now kiss your boyfriend."

Taking advantage of the (slightly belated) permission, Jensen cupped the back of Jared's head with one hand and rested the other against his cheek as he wriggled into a more comfortable position in his lap. Jared could feel the smile on Jensen's lips as they kissed and he could barely contain his own grin long enough to kiss back efficiently, fitting their mouths together and letting his tongue tickle along the inside curve of Jensen's lips.

It felt kind of ridiculous - they'd already been together for a week, after all - but it was somehow new and exciting now that Jeff had actually decreed that they were dating. Jensen's body was warm and lean in his lap and his lips were soft and eager against his own, and Jared pulled him in closer, wanting to kiss and touch as much of him as he could. 

Through the Com, Jeff sighed. "Are you still kissing? Seriously, I don't need to hear those noises from either of you."

In his defence, Jared did think about detangling himself and saying goodbye to Jeff but there was kissing happening and a very eager boyfriend sitting on his lap and touching him and making little pleased noises which were so much more appealing than whatever Jeff was talking about. Ignoring the Com, Jared wrapped Jensen in his arms and rolled him over to deepen the kiss. 

It didn't take much to lose himself in their embrace and Jared happily let his brain shut out the rest of the world and focus entirely on Jensen, even as he caught a final half-hearted complaint through the Com.

"Oh, yeah, don't mind me," Jeff muttered as Jared settled on the bed between Jensen's thighs, still kissing him thoroughly. "It's not like I'm supposed to be the authority figure here or anything."


End file.
